


10. Frost

by greywolfheir



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, frost - Freeform, the night vale way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:11:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywolfheir/pseuds/greywolfheir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a strange substance on the ground one morning...</p>
            </blockquote>





	10. Frost

**Author's Note:**

> This is set somewhere between First Date and when Strex Corp overtook the radio station

Carlos wasn’t really sure how long he’d been in Night Vale when it appeared. He’d stopped caring about time once he figured out none of the clocks worked and that time in the town just wasn’t worth the effort of keeping track of. What _was_ important was things that tended to hurt the citizens and this new occurrence definitely checked that box.

It appeared one morning in a pink splendor. It covered every surface of the ground, and seemed to have a sticky texture. Well, ok it was a bit more than that. See, the problem was, anyone who stepped in it was…stuck there, like it was some form of pink tar. Carlos had spent the night at his lab, which meant he couldn’t ask Cecil what it was—the radio host was probably still asleep anyway—but at least he had his equipment to analyze it.

Carlos should have known better. As soon as he touched the material with his tweezers, it sucked the utensils right out of Carlos’s hand. Great. On the plus side, the Sheriff’s Secret Police came by around noon and cleared the streets with some strange machine that Carlos couldn’t even begin to analyze before it sped by.

As Carlos walked to Cecil’s apartment, he noticed that the pink goo was turning orange, and losing its rigid texture. Taking a risk, Carlos took a vial out of his pocket and delicately put it to the goo. Nothing happened, and the stuff went straight into Carlos’s vial. He tucked the vial back into his lab coat and continued on. That’s when the screams started.

Carlos ran around the corner to see a little girl with tears in her eyes, cradling her presumably wounded arm while her mother scolded her.

“I warned you, honey,” her mother was saying as Carlos reached them.

“Do you mind if I look at her hand?” Carlos asked. “I’m a doctor.”

The woman smiled and simply said, “Of course I know who you are, Carlos.”

Carlos took that as a yes, and gently took the girl’s hand. The tips of her fingers were dark blue, almost black and very swollen. If Carlos weren’t sweating in the middle of a desert town, he might have called it…frostbite. He was about to ask to take the girl where her hand could be bandaged when the dark blue started lightening and the fingers slowly began returning to normal right up until they were back to a healthy pink color.

“Oh…I didn’t think that was…okay,” Carlos breathed, once again absolutely confused by Night Vale but starting to get used to it. He needed to get to Cecil’s apartment.

 

* * *

 

“Cecil, this is important,” Carlos breathed out as he burst into his boyfriend’s apartment. “There’s this… _goo_ thing outside, and it sucks things into it and I think it causes frostbite and—“

“Oh, you mean the _frost_?” Cecil laughed. “I know it’s not exactly the _coldest_ place here or wherever you came from but I should think you’ve seen frost before.”

Carlos let out a breath. “Right, well, let’s just say I haven’t. Is it supposed to hurt people like that.”

“Well only if they’re stupid enough to touch it,” Cecil huffed. “I mean, it’s like people _ask_ it to bite them, like they don’t know why it’s called frost _bite_.”

“Of course,” Carlos said like it was  a perfectly reasonable explanation. He took the vial out of his coat. “Well I took a sample anyway.”

Cecil’s face lit up and reached out to delicately take it. “It actually let you take a sample? It must really like you! Normally, it just bites through even—oh!”

Cecil jumped like…well, like he’d been bitten, and dropped the vial. Carlos knew what would happen if the frost broke out of the glass right next to Cecil’s feet, so he leaped forward and pushed Cecil to the ground, away from the harmful frost. He landed on top of a furiously blushing radio intern.

“Carlos, my hero!” Cecil exclaimed, wrapping his arms around Carlos’s neck and planting a kiss on his lips.

“All in a day’s work,” Carlos said, trying and failing to keep the smile off his face.

 

* * *

 

“It’s that time of year again, citizens—winter! The Sherriff’s Secret Police remind you to keep to the streets and _not_ to go outside until the frost is clear from your door. If you happen to get bitten, remember to  touch your wounds to your bloodstone to prevent any and all secondary bites. I had a very close call this afternoon, but luckily sweet, heroic _Carlos_ saved me. But that’s enough about him. It’s now time for traffic…”


End file.
